The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (10 page)

Felix felt the edges of his mouth tilting up into a smile, then quickly looked up, expecting to see the disapproving faces of his parents. But there was nothing but clear air and blue sky. For now (at least) he was safe. Up ahead, he saw the brick façade of Downey, and directly across from it, Satler. From a distance, the dorms looked identical, and close up, they still looked identical. The only distinguishing feature between the two all-freshman dorms, tucked away in the northeast corner of campus, was their names: One was named for Bernard Satler, a wealthy alumnus, and the other, for a former dean, Thomas Downey.

Felix skirted around the fatassosaurs to get a better view of the Freshman Yard, a stretch of emerald green grass that separated the dorms. He didn’t like what he was seeing: the miniaturized version of The Yard was crawling with people. Little kids were chasing each other across the grass, and older people—parents, he supposed—were walking around aimlessly taking pictures. There was a game of soccer on one side, and on the other, it looked like the students were playing wiffle ball against their parents and younger siblings. He picked up the scent of cooking meat and noticed white smoke drifting up from a line of grills set up at the edge of the lawn over on the Satler side.

When Felix had left the dorm with Allison for freshman orientation it wasn’t quite this bad, but it was getting there. The masses had started arriving two days ago, and now every freshman was here, along with some lingering relatives. He just wasn’t used to so many people being around. This part of the campus had been practically deserted for the past two weeks; there were days when he didn’t even see anyone in Downey. And Downey was really nice, especially since he had the run of the place: It all felt like a posh hotel to Felix. Not that he’d ever stayed at a posh hotel. But now absolute chaos had replaced his fortress of solitude.

When they reached the Freshman Yard, Salty and Jonas left the path and headed toward Satler. “Yo Jonas,” Larry called out, as Jonas and Salty strolled right through the middle of the wiffle ball field, getting in the way of a startled-looking little girl trying to run the bases. “If I see your cousin, I’ll tell her where she can find you. Oh—I forgot. She’s still in high school.”

Jonas turned and shouted: “You’re such a dick, Larry!” A fifty-something woman with a glove on her hand and a foot on second base flinched and gazed up at Jonas like she was looking at the devil incarnate with her own eyes.

“That’s what your cousin told me!” Larry yelled after him and laughed loudly.

Felix smiled, but quickly caught himself and looked up, heart thumping fast. No parents. It seemed the cloud of parental scorn was giving him a temporary reprieve today.

He followed Larry up the steps to Downey, and immediately groaned in frustration. The lobby was worse than the Freshman Yard. It looked like a few hundred people had gathered for a choreographed farewell scene in some cheesy movie. There was lots of hugging, teary-eyed mothers and fathers whose expressions ran the gamut from proud to comatose.

Felix used Larry as a blocker to thread his way through the mob to the staircase adjacent to the elevators, stepping over suitcases and boxes, and dodging students running up and down the stairs like hyperactive children off their meds. They finally made it to the second floor—guys occupied the second and fourth floors, girls the first and third—where Larry told Felix that the Betas (one of the frats) were having a party tonight, then he lumbered off down the hallway.

Felix continued up, taking the stairs two and three at a time, trying to slide past the newcomers without crashing into them. There were tons of people clotting the fourth floor hallway. Most were students, but there was a fair share of parents looking around and unpacking things and just generally trying to act like they didn’t feel out of place. The students looked like Felix, only happier and more excited to be there. Some of them said hello. He nodded, and muttered hello back.

When he arrived at his room, he paused, standing at the door, staring at it. This was the moment he’d dreaded. He really liked his room. It sounded lame, but it
was
his private sanctuary, a place where he could be alone and block out the rest of the world and his shitty life. He’d taken it for granted. That chapter was over. Someone else was in there now—
a roommate
—waiting on the other side of the door. Someone he would be sharing the cramped space with for the entire school year.

The air in the hallway suddenly felt heavy. His stomach turned and a spurt of anxiety constricted his throat. He reached out for the knob and realized that his hand had tightened itself into a fist, his fingernails biting into his palm. He blew out a quick breath and relaxed his fingers, curling them around the knob. He cracked open the door and cautiously peered in.

A stranger was lying in Felix’s bed, flip flops on, hands clasped behind head, head on pillow. He looked very comfortable.

As Felix stepped into the room, the stranger—
my roommate
, he reminded himself—popped up and smiled at him. He was three or four inches shorter than Felix, but stockier, with dark brown hair and a few days’ worth of scruff on his chin.

“Hey, I’m Lucas,” he said, still smiling. “You must be Felix. Or at least I hope you’re Felix. Cause if you’re not, then I’m totally in the wrong room.” He started laughing.

Felix smiled back hesitantly, wondering if he’d seen Lucas before somewhere. He looked really familiar. But where was it? Freshman orientation? “Yeah—good to meet you. But um… actually, sorry, but I’ve been using that one.” He pointed apologetically at his bed.

“Oh! Sorry, dude.” Lucas smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I needed a little TO from unpacking my shit. I won’t bang any chicks on your bed if you don’t bang any on mine. Deal?” He laughed. “Sorry, I’m a little out of it. My flight got in late and I didn’t get to freshman orientation until that douchey president kid was doin’ his, ‘once a Sturgeon, forever a Sturgeon’ bullshit.”

“He is a douche, right?” Felix said.

“No question.”

Felix already liked this kid.

“So you’ve been here a while, right? For football practice?” Lucas took a step back and his eyes appraised him. “Dude, you’re
tall
. I bet you’re pretty good.” If Lucas noticed that Felix was feeling anxious, he wasn’t showing it.

“I don’t know. I’m okay, I guess.” Felix shrugged. “I kinda sucked today though. A steroid freak nearly killed me. I probably have a concussion and don’t even know it.”

Lucas laughed—a big, hearty, open-mouthed laugh. There was something about it that took Felix by surprise (in a good way). It sounded completely genuine and unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that makes everyone in the room want to laugh right along. Its infectiousness was working its way into Felix, and he felt himself getting pulled in.

“I played football in high school.” Lucas struck a Heisman pose. “Back in Excelsior Township, I was a pretty decent running back.”

“That’s cool. Where’s that?”

“Minnesota.”

“Wait a minute!” Felix suddenly realized where he’d seen him. “
Lucas
from Minnesota. You’re Lucas Mayer. You’re Minnesota Mayer! I thought you looked familiar. You’re from that reality show, right? What’s it called?”

Lucas grinned sheepishly.
“Summer Slumming.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Holy shit! Where was that house? Florida? It was pretty bad, right?”

“Fort Lauderdale,” Lucas said, nodding. “It wasn’t a house. It was a
shithouse
. A total disaster. Two bedrooms for all ten of us. It sucked. But that was the whole premise of the show. Ten eighteen-year-olds about to go off to college trying to survive the summer in a dump that smells like unwiped ass.”

“That’s so awesome!” Felix said. “I saw all the episodes—I think. But there weren’t very many, were there?”

“Eight. We’re still waiting to find out if the network’s gonna pick up another season.”

Felix had never met a celebrity before—or even seen one in person. He found himself staring at Lucas, and the first thing that struck him was how much he looked like the kid on TV. Which made perfect sense, of course, because he was the kid on TV. From what he remembered of the show, the girls in the Fort Lauderdale shithouse all loved Lucas, but he kept pissing them off because he was a big time wise ass.

“Hey!” Felix said abruptly. Something had occurred to him. “Didn’t you bang whatsherface? In the last episode? The blonde? The hot one.”

“Yeah,” Lucas admitted, shaking his head like he was embarrassed. “I did. And yeah—she was smoking hot. But doing it on TV was
stupid
. It’s hard to explain, but even though you know the cameras are there, sometimes you forget or… maybe it just doesn’t register, that on the other side of ‘em are like millions of people in their living rooms hoping you make an ass of yourself. And the producers are always in your ear telling you to do something—something crazy or stupid. And it’s kinda… addictive, I guess.” He dragged a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes. “The show was wild. Don’t get me wrong—I loved every minute of it. And I can’t even tell you how many chicks I’ve nailed because I’m on it. But I am
so
happy to be here.”

“In Oregon?” Felix asked, surprised.

“Yep.”

“It’s a long way from Minnesota,” Felix said.

“My three older brothers went here. I’m a triple legacy. The admissions office couldn’t turn me down.”

“Any of ‘em still here?”

“No. My brother Bret graduated two years ago, and he was the last—besides me. I have another brother. Tanner. He’s a year behind me. He’s thinking about making it five Mayers in a row. I don’t know if my mom’s too happy about that though. She’s already freaking out as it is.”

Felix puzzled over this for a moment.
“Freaking out?
About what?”

Lucas looked surprised. “Seriously? You’re from around here aren’t you?”

“Oh,” Felix said, finally getting it. “You mean the forest thing.”

“Of course I mean the forest thing.” Lucas kicked aside a deflated duffel bag, crossed the room and sat down on his bed (just a mattress with no sheets or a pillow). “They just found those two hikers. I heard they were missing limbs and shit. And the guy on the news was saying they haven’t found the dude’s head.” He cringed. “And those three campers—they’re still missing, right? The one’s from like four months ago. And they were in the
same
forest. Everyone thinks it’s connected. My mom definitely does. What’s that place called? Andley Forest?”

“Ashfield,” Felix corrected, taking a seat on his bed. “It’s not too far from here.” He knew all about the
forest thing
(everyone in Oregon did), but he’d just been taking it one day at a time. That was the only way he could survive. He felt like he was drowning in a pool of anguish and anxiety and the only way he could get air was to suck it through a straw that seemed to be getting punctured with more holes by the day. His own troubles had been so consuming he really had no idea what was going on in the world. But the murders in Ashfield Forest, the
‘Ashfield Forest Mystery’,
the media was calling it, had dominated the headlines, making it impossible for even Felix to ignore.

“You hear anything new?” Lucas asked. “What’s the inside scoop? What are the locals saying?”

“Monsters or aliens,” Felix said dryly. “That’s what the crazies think.”

Lucas laughed nervously. “Maybe the crazies are right. It’s just… messed up. You couldn’t pay me enough to go to that forest. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens when you go into the woods. Dude—this is depressing. But I’ve got just the thing.” He pushed himself off the mattress, stepped over to the closet next to his bed, and flung open the doors. Felix stood up to see what he was doing. Lucas bent down, reached inside and scooped up a box in both hands which he held above his head for a moment before shouting: “Beer! The number one doctor recommended cure for depression!” He put the box on his bed and after demolishing one end of it, took out two cans and brought one over to Felix.

Lucas pulled back the tab on his can and held it up to Felix who did the same. “Here’s to an awesome year. Once a Sturgeon—”

“Forever a Sturgeon,” Felix finished, and they clicked their cans together.

Lucas laughed and drank from his can.

Felix took three long swallows and looked around the room. Strangely, even with a roommate, it still felt like a sanctuary. He felt a smile creeping across his face. Then his smile turned into a halting laugh, then finally, he broke into an actual laugh that rivaled Lucas’s. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like this. It felt good. It felt really good.

“You know what we’re gonna need?” Lucas said, grinning at Felix like they’d been friends for years.

“A fridge,” Felix answered quickly. The beer tasted several degrees warmer than room temperature, like it had been sitting in a sun-heated car for a good while.

“Damn right,” Lucas agreed. He wiped beer from his chin and belched. “This tastes like piss. Good piss—but still piss.”

“Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“Dude, that was my first priority after I found the dorm. There’s a little convenience store down the road, and the guy at the counter barely looked at my license.”

“Whose license?”

“My brother’s. If anyone asks, I’m twenty-six.” Lucas smiled and drank from his can.

“I almost forgot.” Felix glanced down at his watch. “My friend should be here any minute.”

“Cool. Is he on the football team?”

“She.
Allison. Friend from back home.”

“Just a friend?”

Felix nodded. “We hang out a lot, but we’ve never hooked up or anything.”

“Why not? She busted?”

“Not even close,” Felix said with a smile. “Probably the hottest girl at my high school.”

“You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

“No.” Felix paused. “I dated this girl—Emma—for like three years, then things just… ended right after graduation.”

“Why’d you dump her?”

Emma, Felix’s girlfriend—
ex-girlfriend
—was the only girl he’d ever been with. They started dating sophomore year and were inseparable all during high school. They did everything together. He’d even told her that he loved her; one star-filled night in the back seat of his Wrangler he’d confessed his unshakeable teenage love to her. And how’d she repay him? Two weeks after graduation she broke up with him. Just like that, three years of movie nights, keggers in the woods, proms and car sex were all discarded like a greasy fast food wrapper. She didn’t even call him after the fire. Everyone gets dumped at some point, but the things Emma had told him at the lake—her reasons for breaking up with him—were too embarrassing and too painful to dredge up.